According to the the report of Transparency International EU Office, the last European elections have been more transnational than ever before, with European Spitzenkandidaten campaigning all around the European Union and with electoral campaigning online targeting voters across borders.

The project highlights a number of issues that TI-EU believes should be addressed in future elections: to what extent can candidates with high-level functions make use of administrative resources for their campaigning? If national political parties invest considerable sums of money into candidates for EU-level positions with power over 28 member states, can this happen in a fragmented legal framework or under purely national rules? When campaigning targets voters across borders, which rules should apply and which authorities make sure that there is no undue private financing, misuse of public funds or privileged access to media channels?

In order to increase to transparency and integrity of the next European Parliament elections, Transparency argues that there will have to be a new regulatory and supervisory framework, either by introducing common EU-level rules on European election campaigns or at least by adapting EU-level and national-level rules or supervision mechanisms to the new transnational reality.